Crime
Prime Target
This math-centric thriller comes with an interesting premise. But Prime Target comes with some primary problems, too.
The kids didn’t mean to steal a starship.
Strictly speaking, the starship kinda stole them.
Oh, sure, they found the thing in a place they weren’t supposed to be and well after they should’ve been home eating dinner. But one thing led to another, and wouldn’t you know it, the spacecraft lifted off, kids in tow, and immediately flew into hyperspace.
Now the children are lost in space aboard what seems like a pirate ship, with only a cantankerous droid (SM-33) and an untrustworthy adult to help them.
And that untrustworthy adult? He might not be very helpful at all.
The adult introduces himself as Jod Na Nawood. And Wim, the excitable kid who found the spaceship in the first place, is sure the guy’s a Jedi. He can make things float! He can send guards scurrying the other way!
But Fern, Wim’s frienemy who somehow is now the ship’s captain, thinks “Jod” is as much a Jedi as the critter who lives in SM-33’s eye socket. He’s up to something. She’s sure of it.
And a little suspicion might be called for. See, the four kids (Fern, Wim, the calculating KB and the blue-skinned Neel) come from At Attin. And that’s pretty intriguing, even if the children don’t realize it. For the kids, At Attin’s just about as pleasantly milquetoast a planet as can be found. All their parents work as analysts. Safety droids make sure everyone does what they’re supposed to do.
Boring.
But here’s the thing: The rest of the galaxy has assumed for years that At Attin was nothing more than a myth—like El Dorado or Shangri-La. And like those mysterious earthly realms, At Attin is supposedly home to an unimaginable treasure.
Jod—or whatever his name is—could use a spot of treasure. Who couldn’t? The kids just want to go home. For now, their paths align nicely. But for how long?
Disney+ has had, shall we say, an uneven history with its Star Wars shows. The Mandalorian and Andor? Pretty great. The Book of Boba Fett? Not so much.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew has its issues, which we’ll get into. But as a straight-up show, it’s a blast.
If Andor gave us a political, shades-of-gray drama that showed us how rich and layered a Star Wars drama can be, Skeleton Crew is just flat-out fun. It’s been called Goonies in space, and honestly, that feels just about right. The first episode feels like something pulled straight out of Steven Spielberg’s bag, had the director lived in a galaxy far, far away. If Andor is Star Wars for adults, Skeleton Crew is made, gleefully, for kids. Or for kids at heart.
But that said, parents need to be mindful of some potential issues that also snuck on board.
As is the case with most Star Wars stories, viewers will be exposed to plenty of violence. None of it is particularly bloody or gory, of course, but quite a few characters (humans and humanish-creatures) get beaten up and knocked out. The threat of danger and death lurks around the dark side of every planet, it seems.
We should also note that KB apparently has two worried moms—though, given they’re halfway across the galaxy from our main players, they seem to be rather tertiary characters. We hear the occasional profanity. The Force is a powerful, potent element. Bodily functions can mess the mix, too. And, of course, our pre-pubescent heroes would’ve been safe at home had they just listened to their parents.
We certainly can’t minimize any of those issues. And yes, it’s still early in the show’s run. But compared to the grim, grimy galaxy of Andor or the murky, problematic environs of The Acolyte, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew feels like a welcome, if relative, return to form.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out. )
The Empire has fallen, and the New Republic is trying to keep the galaxy stable. But the Republic’s good intentions can’t stave off waves of piracy that plague the galactic edges.
That doesn’t bother the residents of At Attin—a planet that feels a lot like suburban America, just with cooler vehicles. Protected by a mysterious “barrier,” few on the planet have ever even seen stars, much less visited them. But when a young kid named Wim literally stumbles on a relic from days gone by, that changes for a handful of children.
Wim and his blue-skinned friend, Neel, are obsessed with the stories of Jedi. They even engage in a mock lightsaber battle while waiting for the school tram. And when Wim first discovers the massive relic, he thinks that it’s an old Jedi temple. He and Neel sneak away from their homes to uncover and open it, but Fern and her friend, KB, call “claimsies” and thus procure the ruin for themselves.
“You can still dig,” Fern says. “As our employees.”
But when they find a way inside, they discover it’s not a temple, but a ship—a fact reinforced when Wim pushes the wrong button and sends them literally flying into space.
The ship is filled with skeletons. They spy a “dead” droid with a critter living inside its eye socket. In another part of the galaxy, a pirate ship attacks a cruiser: In a scene intentionally reminiscent of the opening moments of Star Wars: A New Hope, combatants shoot and down each other. One man lifts another by his neck. In Wim’s and Neel’s mock lightsaber battle, Neel claims that he lost an arm, and imaginary guts are spilled, too. Wim tumbles down a hillside. He nearly falls off the spaceship before being pulled inside.
Wim fails to study for an important test, takes a dangerous shortcut, sneaks out of his house, disobeys his father and generally acts as you’d expect a mischievous boy to behave. (He’s also seemingly envious of Neel’s intact, engaged family, as his own father works late into most evenings.) Fern races landspeeders—a hobby that her mother doesn’t even know about. Neel takes a bath (though nothing critical on the alien critter is seen), and he expresses a certain romantic interest in one of his female classmates.
Roona tells a story about the ruin—saying that the whole place was a building where people were trapped by poison gas. “They had to bury them alive, trapped underground forever,” she lies. Other lies are told as well.
The kids are now lost in space, and the “dead” droid awakens. The droid, SM-33, looks frantically for the ship’s captain, so that he can be told what to do with these stowaways. Fern tells SM-33 that she’s the captain now, as she killed the old captain in single combat. SM-33 buys the lie and declares his allegiance. And he volunteers to fly the ship to a “safe” port. Well, safe if you’re a pirate, that is.
The port is a wretched hive of scum and villainy if ever there was one. A female alien (who appears to work at an establishment of ill-repute) talks to Fern and KB and tells them that the place isn’t safe for children. And indeed it isn’t. Several strangers do their best to cheat Wim out of his lunch money. And when that doesn’t work, they threaten violence.
Characters get into a melee with an angry, tough droid—leaving some of them unconscious. A blaster is fired. Threats are issued. Fern says she stabbed the old captain in the guts and “threw him into space.” When Wim protests Fern’s new position as ship captain, SM-33 tells him he can challenge Fern’s authority by “challenging the captain to a battle to the death.” SM-33 says that visitors to the port will “rest well—in a soft bed, or a shallow grave.” Skeletons are found throughout the kids’ ship. (Neel speculates that a couple of the deceased likely died in a duel.) The Force is used. An alien vomits messily. Someone uses the word “kriffing,” an obvious stand-in for the f-word. Neel complains about the smell of the ship.
The kids escape with a new associate—a shadowy character who calls himself Jod Na Nowood. He appears to have some ability to manipulate the Force, and Wim believes him to be a Jedi. Funny, then, how everyone seems to call him “Crimson Jack,” and treat him a bit like a pirate.
Wim may believe that Jod is one of the galaxy’s pure-and-good paladins, but his friends aren’t so sure. Fern is especially skeptical, and she’s happy to tell Jod so. When KB hears some guards shuffling around a corridor—much like Jod did just moments before, Fern snidely says, “I guess KB’s got the Force, too.”
“The Force flows through us all,” Jod says, forcing a smile.
Jod leads the kids to an old associate of his, a feminine owl/cat creature named Kh’ymm. But he warns the children that she might stab them in the back (metaphorically speaking). When Jod stands outside Kh’ymm’s door, the building’s animated eye sockets ogle Jod up and down, and we hear Kh’ymm say that he’s “looking well. Very well.”
An escape from a pirate port leads to a lot of property destruction (and, possibly, unseen casualties). The kids’ ship gets into a fight with a pair of spacecraft. (One is hit, but the worst injury is a bit of smoke inhalation.) Elsewhere, a man fights with an alien creature, sending a pile of books tumbling. Other physical melees take place. There’s an insinuation that Jod is more dangerous than he lets on: He apparently disables (or even kills) someone off-camera.
We hear two uses of “d–n.”
Back on At Attin, we see the children’s worried parents, including KB’s two moms.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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